Monday, November 17, 2014

I took the bike outside to take some clear pictures of the Tidalforce M-750X electric bike with the auxiliary water bottle mounted battery. It looks really nice and clean. I need to do a few more things. Clean up the cables some more and to add a disc brake to the front fork so that it can work with the disc wheel! :)

I spent a few minutes last week finishing up the Tidalforce Electric Bike Bottle Mount Battery Pack.

I wrapped the case with an acrylic outer shell and overwrapped it with some very wide gaffers tape. It looks very clean and matches the frame of the Tidalforce bike very well. It's highly water resistant and the acrylic protects the cells inside.

With the battery mounted near the middle of the bike, the balance is greatly improved over a rear rack mounted pack. Also, the bike feels so much lighter to move around. I haven't measured it yet, but it has to be at least 25 lbs lighter than with the front hub battery.

Saturday, November 8, 2014

I worked on the bottle mount battery tonight. I bought some acrylic and gaffers tape and created a shell/case for the somewhat delicate LIPO battery. The battery does not have a protective case so I created one. I need to put a top on it and seal it from the elements, however, it's very stable and looks very solid. I used 3 3M Velstraps.

Friday, October 10, 2014

I've been agonizing for quite a while on how to best place a 3rd party battery pack on the Tidalforce M-750 or M-750X frame. Having a rear rack is challenging since the bike folds and using a beam rack seems unreliable since the weight on a beam would naturally want to move off axis (swing left or right).

Mounting it on the front of the bike isn't practical either, however, with a front rack, it might be easier.

I finally happened upon perhaps an ideal placement for a small 3rd party LiPO pack. Right on the water bottle mounts!

I bought an adjustable water bottle cage and tried mounting the LiPO pack to it. It seems to work quite well. The weather hasn't been cooperating and I haven't had a chance to ride it yet, however, I'm very hopeful that it will work out well.

This obviously won't be the final packaging of the battery, however, It did look snug and held tight with just Gorilla duct tape.

I recently picked up a couple of batteries for my Tidalforce bikes. One of the huge advantages of having Tidalforce bikes is the ability to use 3rd party batteries. You are never stuck with the company's original battery when it's time to upgrade. You can use any decent battery that can support approximately a 30A draw. That isn't just any battery, but choices available at that rating are pretty wide.

I picked up a Headway LiFePO4 12.5Ah pack and also a 10Ah LiPO pack. Here's a comparison shot of the two side-by-side. The smaller one is the LiPO and the larger is the LiFePO4.

The LiPO pack is about 1/4 the size of the LiFePO4 pack, however, the LiFePO4 pack has a much longer life expectancy than the LiPO pack. The LiPO pack has the advantage of more even power output and much higher power density...

Here's the video of my ride. Come along! Be sure to zoom up to full screen view. The camera was rattling inside the case and my battery pack wasn't secured on the rear rack very well so it rattled as well. However, it rode very nicely and as usual, very quietly. There are deer on this video as well as the Tidalforce bikes are so incredibly quiet that deer don't seem to be bothered by it even though I'm within a few feet of them. The buck didn't move an inch.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

I received a badly damaged Tidalforce motor recently. I was curious what had happened to it. It's the first time I've actually opened a Tidalforce motor. I won't open a working Tidalforce motor since I might damage it. However, opening a damaged one seemed doable. One of the magnets seems to have hit the poles of the motor and cracked In half. That caused a catastrophic failure of the entire motor. The previous owner damaged the bearings on the torque arm side and also the seals as well. This may not be salvageable.

The open 7 pole Tidalforce motor.

The damaged ring of magnets. They we're help in place by small plastic spacers between each magnet.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

I went for an afternoon bike ride on my Tidalforce iO Step-through and happened upon an electric bike shop in the neighborhood. The shop is called hybridpedals.com in Arlington Virginia. They have a shop window and in it are a Ford Electric Bike made by Pedego and also a Optibike! The Ford bike is based on an Ellsworth frame and it is spectacular looking. I need to go back and take it for a test ride and compare it against my Tidalforce iO-X bike.

Monday, June 16, 2014

Since the black Tidalforce iOX Cruiser's front battery hub is dead, I thought I'd swap out the front wheel with a disc wheel with the Schwalbe Big Apple tires while I fix the front hub battery. Since the wheel does not have a caliper brake rim, I had to install front disc brakes on the iOX. It wasn't difficult. I had to go to my local bike shop to get a brake cable cut to length but that's all that was required. The wheel already had a 203mm disc rotor installed. I used the appropriate adapter for the Avid BB7 disc brakes and the bike was upgraded in no time.

I like the look of the iOX with the new wheel. It looks sleeker and lighter.